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Monday night ~ Jilly calls me Sunday evening and invites me to dinner Monday night, and if the weather holds, we will run the dawgs. We head to Oso Bay around 6:30 p.m. with wine, cell phones, a flash light and a 4 wheel drive Dodge Ram pickup truck with a Hemi. 🙂 The City of Corpus Christi is building a new nature walk and the initial infrastructure makes for a great place to walk, and when appropriate, unleash the dawgs. We are 3/4’s of a mile into our walk and I see Remy 50 feet in front of us, rolling, thrashing really. It’s dusk and while we can still see well, shapes on the ground are just that. I shine my flashlight. I think it’s an empty bag of fertilizer. Jilly notices Jaws rolling on the opposite side of the path. Jaws has an interesting way of mimicking Remy, and, thankfully, halfheartedly. It’s another bag. I kick (BIG MISTAKE) the bag Remy rolled in and we see fish carcasses. There are more bags that we can see. Bastards. By now, I am gagging and crossing my legs trying not to pee with each gag reflex. Remy and Jaws are in stink heaven. Did I mention the temp is dropping and the wind is howling and I don’t have gloves or a hat (and thank Gawd, ’cause they would have been stinky, too)? As this is all happening, I notice a car off the trail and suggest we head back. It’s not flashlight time, but getting there. The dawgs are running around us, literally "stinking to high heaven." I’m gagging, which I normally DO NOT do. I can take blood, guts, vomit … whatever. I’m a Mother. I quickly make the decision that Remy will ride home in the back. Jaws is not trained for this and has to load up in the back seat. We roll the windows down. I’m grateful I poured us to-go glasses of wine. I light a cigarette. We pull in the drive and Remy spots a cat. She minds and waits until I get the leash on and let the tailgate down, but when I do this, she freaks on the cat and I slosh wine all over the left side of my jacket. Great. Off we go to the greenhouse for baths. I end up bathing Remy three times. We hose the wine off my fleece jacket and throw it in the washing machine. <I am shaking my head and laughing at the memory> The smell is awful. When we get the two of them bathed, Rogelio pours us more wine and we go to the patio to smoke. I still smell the stink. Jilly thinks it’s in my nose . . . and then I smell my nylon jacket sleeve and almost puke! It’s on my jacket. It comes off and goes in the wash. I’m back on the patio. I still smell dead fish. I smell the leg of my yoga pants – contaminated, those come off very quickly . . . shoes and socks still on. I take off my shoes and socks while Jill gets me pants to put on. Then I smell my socks. Then shoes. All contaminated. By now, I am down to my panties, bra and shirt and we are laughing so hard. I am exhausted with laughter. We eat dinner, watch a little of the Olympics and Remy comes up to touch base and I smell dead fish. I start sniffing. It’s her collar. And because I did not wash her collar, her neck needs to be washed again, so back out to the greenhouse we go. She is tail tucked and not happy. As I’m washing her and the collar, I realize her leash probably stinks too (it does) and wash it, as well. The last of the wine is poured, most of my clothes and tennis shoes are in the dryer by now and the dawgs are all laying in front of the fireplace . . . being dawgs. It was one of those excellent drawn out comedies, and while the intent was to simply run the dawgs and have a meal, which was delicious BTW, we will talk about this dawg run for months to come. Remy is blissfully snoring on the sofa as I type this. Ahhhhhh . . . it is so rewarding to have a dawg daughter who achieves her ecstasy by thrashing about in ripe death. Bonus is all the clothes I was wearing needed washing and Remy needed a bath.

Author’s Note:This short story started out as an email to a friend in Iowa who, apparently found it so deliciously funny (especially the part where I’m gagging and trying not to pee) he read it numerous times. His response was, “You have got to put this story somewhere. This is one of the funniest stories I have read in a long long time. I have read it three times and I still laugh when I read it.”